She slowly turned back to him and pointed at the butt on the ground, her face closed off now. “Your mom is going to smell the smoke anyway.”
“I’m twenty-seven years old.”
“And yet you hide behind the garage when you want to smoke.”
It was hard not to smile at his annoyed expression. But she merely cleared her throat and said matter-of-factly, “To come back to your question: I’m not angry with Heath. I’m simply unhappy with the entire situation. It doesn’t seem as if I can help him, but maybe you could.”
“Hayden …”
“Couldn’t you at least try to talk to him? You have no idea how awful he’s feeling.”
Shane’s expression became shuttered. “If he wants to behave like an asshole, it’s his own problem, not mine.”
She felt dejected as she followed him into the house. She could barely keep from bursting into tears when she saw the two empty chairs at the dining room table.
Chapter 2
“Fitzpatrick! Chief wants to see you!”
Heath turned and nodded at Marty before signaling another colleague to take over. They were checking the turntable ladder. As incident command, he was responsible for inspection and maintenance after a run, and he preferred to be there when they inspected the equipment. However, everything looked fine so far, and their most recent call had only been the proverbial kitty in a tree, so he didn’t expect any issues.
He left the depot and crossed the rec room, where lunch was being prepared in the galley and some other firefighters were playing poker. He shifted his head from side to side, hoping to rid himself of the tautness in the back of his neck, and yawned simultaneously. He was exhausted, but his shift wasn’t over yet. The last fourteen hours had brought some arduous, taxing tasks. It was always the same: when a shift began uneventfully, you started to hope you’d spend your day without any major incidents, but next thing you knew, you didn’t even have time to grab a bite to eat due to the alarm going off and calls piling up.
First, there had been the school gym that burned down, and they’d had to carry out the janitor, who suffered smoke inhalation. Next, they’d been called to a massive ten-car pileup, where victims were stuck in their smoking cars, needing to be rescued from the burning wreckage. Without much time to breathe, the crew had then been called to a high-rise to keep an office worker, who had just been fired, from jumping from the tenth floor. And after that came the tiny kitten that had escaped its owner, a woman almost 100 years old, and climbed a tree. As cats are wont to, the little thing wouldn’t come back down on its own, so they’d gone up to get her, while granny sobbed on the porch. After the successful rescue, the old lady had provided the men with homemade cookies, which they’d quickly devoured.
Owen, the company’s paramedic, seemed to have fallen into a sugar coma after eating most of the cookies, because he was now sleeping on one of the faded couches that lined the rec room. Heath was envious. He would have loved to take a nap as well, but after the imminent meeting with the chief, he had a bunch of paperwork waiting. He would dig into that, while at the same time digging into the homemade chili his colleague Collum had cooked. He also needed to set aside a little time to look at the hydraulics of the fire pump and to check the gear. Sleep had to wait until after the end of his shift in a few hours.
“Hey, Heath! You still haven’t penciled in your holidays.” Sam, the head of the hazmat team, threw him an impatient glance. “Chief wants the dates by the end of the week.”
“Yeah, Moira wants me to book a vacation,” Marty, a twenty-year veteran of the force, chimed in. “She keeps nagging me about it.”
“And I want to take my kids to see the grandparents in Arkansas this winter.” Sam put his newspaper aside and frowned at it, or at Heath, or it could have been at anything, really. “My ex is finally being gracious enough to let me take them. If I can’t get the dates I need because of you, Fitzpatrick …”
Heath was impatient, too, and threw back his aching head. “Just pencil me in anywhere that’s left.”
“If that’s the case, I want Halloween off,” Jesse, their best firefighter on the ladder, piped up immediately. “My nephew is going to be in his school play.” He got up quickly to fetch the vacation calendar from the bulletin board.
“Heath.” Greg O’Sullivan stuck his head out of the crew room, stopping him just before he reached the chief’s office. “I know it’s none of my business, but you should really take a week off soon, too.”
“You’re right, it is none of your business.” Heath walked right past his older colleague, knocked on the chief’s door, and entered the office. “You wanted to see me, Chief?”
“Come in and take a seat.” The chief of the department waved him inside with a grim expression, quickly pushing a bunch of paperwork aside and running a hand over his graying hair.
Heath closed the door behind him, knitting his brows, and sat down in front of the desk that was laden with folders and files. On the one hand, the room had barely changed in the last three months. But on the other, this was now Chief Brody’s office, and there was hardly a thing left in here to remind Heath of his dad. Every time he entered the room, a dismal feeling started to descend on him. He stared at the wood-paneled wall opposite him, which, ever since he’d been a teenager and his dad had been made fire chief, had held family photos that were now gone.
“If this is about my vacation plans, Chief—”
His boss waved a dismissive hand and shook his head, pushing a manila folder across the table. “It’s not about vacation, Heath.”
He took a breath, reached for the folder, and opened it, even though the moment he had seen the chief’s serious expression, he’d already known what this was about. No matter that he had only known this man for three months, the firefighter in Heath was trained to sense when a situation was serious. He skimmed the letter, braced himself, and gave his superior a look he forced to be emotionless.
“Am I suspended?”
“By no means.” Chief Brody unbuttoned the top button of his spotlessly white uniform shirt, which was bedecked with an array of ribbon clasps, representing all the decorations and honors the chief had been awarded in the course of his career. Heath’s own dad had received just as many, and three months ago, he’d been awarded another—posthumously.
“Chief, if I’m not suspended, what am I supposed to make of this letter?”
“Listen, Heath, you know how these bureaucrats think …” His superior heaved a sigh.
“Am I doing a bad job?”
Chief Brody paused before calmly admitting, “You’re doing an extraordinarily good job. Maybe even
too
good of one, considering the circumstances. A break would do you good. A little vacation, you know?”
Heath ground his teeth. “That sounds like suspension to me.”
“If I wanted to suspend you, I wouldn’t have named you as the next candidate for promotion to captain. The administration simply notified me that you still haven’t seen a psychologist, Heath. And you know the regulations.”
Of course he knew the regulations. He should have been warned and reprimanded a while ago, that would’ve been standard protocol. But Joseph Fitzpatrick had been his father, and the new chief had bent the rules and let him remain on duty, even though he needed a certificate of no objection from a qualified psychologist.
But Heath feared any psychologist would see right away how broken he really was. That’s why he would do anything to avoid lying down on a couch and pouring his heart out to a professional.
“These regulations are bullshit,” he snapped, his temper flaring in true Fitzpatrick style. “Chief, I don’t need a psychologist to ask me about my childhood fears and show me inkblots to establish my sanity!”
If any of the men had spoken to his father this flippantly, Joseph Fitzpatrick would have kicked the man’s butt. But Chief Brody merely gave Heath a patient look that made him feel like a preschooler.
“Bullshit or not, we have to abide by the rules, Heath. I can’t do anything about that, but I won’t allow one of my best men to be forced out of active duty, simply because he refuses to see a psychologist.”
“But—”
“You should have gone there three months ago,” the chief cut him off. “I turned a blind eye out of respect for Joe, but now, after all I’ve been seeing and hearing recently, I can no longer ignore the administration’s reminder.”
Furious, Heath leaned forward and balled his hands into fists, which he buried deep in the pockets of his pants. “What are you saying? Do you think I’m unfit for service?”
“I think the fact that you came back on duty right after your father’s death speaks for itself.”
Heath took a deep breath and exhaled through clenched teeth. “What that shows is simply that I love my job, and that I’m aware of my responsibility, Chief.”
“Nobody questioned your dedication.”
“Then what are you trying to tell me?”
Brody raised both hands and let them drop again on the armrests of his office chair. “What, for example, did you intend to prove with your kamikaze move at the gym fire?”
Heath stiffened and pressed his lips together before explaining in a strangely hollow tone, “We were in the middle of dousing the fire when the infrared indicated the unconscious janitor in one of the locker rooms. We were able to get him out safely, and luckily, it was merely a case of mild smoke inhalation.”
“That’s not what I meant, Heath. The rescue team was already on the way to evacuate that man. You were supposed to focus on the seat of the fire. Rescuing the injured party was not your task. You have been on this job long enough to know stunts like that endanger the entire operation.”
“I couldn’t let the man die, could I?”
Instead of answering, the older man calmly explained, “I’ve read your file, Heath. You’ve never been the kind of firefighter to disobey an order, but since I’ve become chief, there have been several cases in which you completely disregarded specific directives or regulations. And, as I knew Joe, I cannot imagine he would have doctored your file.”
“Of course he didn’t do anything like that!” Heath exploded.
In an ostensibly calm tone, Brody asked, “Must I assume then that the reason for your sudden insubordination stems from a lack of respect for me?”
Heath gasped angrily. “No, sir.”
“Then surely you will see the need to pay the psychologist a visit … and stat.” The chief sat up straight. It sounded final. Although he appeared perfectly unperturbed and friendly, the steely determination underneath his polite veneer was unmistakable.
Still, Heath gave it one last try. “Listen, Chief—”
Brody nodded at the door. “You’ve got two weeks, Lieutenant, and then I want to see the certificate of no objection.”
Heath didn’t answer, but Brody could certainly tell how he felt by the bang of the door, which Heath slammed shut behind him.
Heath felt dog-tired as he pushed the shopping cart through the wide aisles of the large grocery store. Thankfully, it was open 24/7 and located only two blocks from his place. He was glad the remainder of his shift had been mostly uneventful, and that he’d been able to wolf down a bowl of chili before they were called to their last operation. The small kitchen fire had been put out quickly, not much work for him and his guys.
He knew his fridge at home was as bare as Antarctica, so he’d stopped by the grocery store on his way home. Normally, he took a shower at the station and changed into civilian clothes when his shift was over, but after the conversation with Brody, he’d been too upset and had only wanted to get away as fast as he could. Which meant he could still smell the smoke on his clothes. He felt filthy as he sneaked through the long aisles in his shirt with the fire department emblem on the chest.
He wasn’t a big fan of frozen food, but neither was he in the mood for cooking something in the tiny kitchenette in his apartment, so it would be a microwave dinner once again. The other option was grabbing a bite at the pub, which he frequented more often than his own place these days. He probably would have gone there for a beer or two if the Red Sox weren’t playing the Yankees tonight. Baseball night meant the pub would be packed, and he would probably meet one of his brothers there, or worse—all of them
and
his sister.
Kayleigh was a big baseball fan and rarely missed a game. And where his sister went, Hayden might go, too. Kayleigh usually dragged her along, since she was also a supporter of the local heroes, even though she preferred basketball.
He could do without that encounter, especially after the day he’d just had. Her visit two days before had been more than enough. They kept running into each other, which was hard not to do, even though he went to great lengths to avoid her. Yes, they lived in Boston, a big city, but it was in the microcosm of Charlestown where they had grown up together and were still living today. They had the same friends and the same interests, which meant Heath could hardly leave the apartment without someone inquiring after Hayden or without meeting her in person. Thus he deemed it wise to simply stay home—or at the pub, if a good baseball game wasn’t on—and reduce contact with friends and family to an absolute minimum. He could hardly bear being around Hayden, and the guilty conscience everyone was giving him didn’t help. He was continually forced to think of her, and his siblings were especially vocal in their opinions of his relationship with Hayden.